How to Create a Skills Framework: A Step-by-Step Guide for Organisations

For many organisations, the interview process is one of the most important levers for shaping workforce quality - yet it is often inconsistent, subjective, and overly reliant on individual judgement. To combat this, Talent Acquisition and HR leaders are increasingly looking for ways to improve how interviews are run, so that hiring decisions are fairer and more predictive of success. Lets explore how moving to a skills framework can be one of the best ways to achieve this goal.

What is a Skills Framework and Why Does it Matter?

A skills framework is a shared language for describing the capabilities people need to succeed in specific roles. Instead of vague requirements like “team player” or “strong communicator”, the framework breaks down roles into clear, observable skills with defined levels of proficiency.

Benefits of using a skills framework include:

• Ensuring interview consistency and reducing subjectivity.

• Improving fairness, transparency, and candidate experience.

• Supporting alignment between hiring, onboarding, and performance management.

Creating a skills framework for your company is a multi step process, and will often involve multiple stakeholders across teams.

Step One: Assess Your Current State

Before implementing a skills framework, it is important to evaluate your current hiring practices. Understanding gaps and pain points will help define the framework’s focus and measure its impact later.

Key assessment activities include:

• Reviewing job descriptions for clarity and alignment.

• Auditing interview questions, guides, and scorecards for consistency.

• Examining post-hire outcomes such as performance and retention.

• Talking to your Hiring Managers and interviewers to see if candidates understand the skills required for the roles they're applying to.

Step Two: Define Scope and Priorities

It is rarely effective to implement a framework for all roles at once. Starting with a pilot allows your team to test and refine the approach before scaling organisation-wide.

Considerations when defining scope include:

• Functions or roles with high hiring volume or critical business impact.

• Areas where current interview processes show inconsistencies, which is often reflected in high turnover rate, or new hires failing probation.

• Input from stakeholders such as managers and high-performing employees as to where they think change should be directed.

Step Three: Build the Framework

Once the scope is clear, the next step is to define the skills and behaviours for each role. Each skill should include a clear definition, observable behaviours, and proficiency levels.

Focus areas when building the framework include:

• Identifying essential skills that predict role success.

• Writing measurable, behaviour-based indicators for each skill.

• Distinguishing proficiency levels (junior, mid, senior).

See our blog on building competency frameworks for examples on how other companies tackle building similar frameworks.

Step Four: Train and Calibrate Interviewers

A framework is only effective if interviewers understand how to use it consistently. Training should cover the purpose of the framework, how to assess skills, and how to apply scorecards objectively.

Best practices include:

• Running mock interviews to practice scoring.

• Reviewing sample candidate responses to calibrate ratings.

• Providing refresher sessions to maintain consistency.

• Encouraging interview shadowing for new interviewers.

Step Five: Communicate and Pilot the Change

Introducing a skills framework requires clear communication and piloting in select teams. Actions to support a successful pilot include:

• Sharing guides, templates, and examples with interviewers. Consider using platforms such as Evidenced to easily roll out interview policy changes company wide.

• Running pilots in select teams or functions.

• Collecting feedback from both interviewers and candidates with surveys immediately after interviews.

Step Six: Monitor, Adjust, and Embed

Even after full rollout, a skills framework requires ongoing attention. HR and TA leaders should monitor metrics, review outcomes, and refine the framework as roles evolve.

Key monitoring practices include:

• Tracking interview consistency and score variance across interviewers, which can be done easily using interview intelligence platforms such as Evidenced.

• Reviewing candidate satisfaction and post-hire performance.

• Updating skills and behavioural indicators as necessary.

• Reinforcing consistent use among interviewers.

Conclusion

Moving to a skills framework is a practical, evidence-based way to improve interview consistency, reduce bias, and make hiring decisions more predictive of success. Whilst the process may take some time to roll out, once entrenched in a companies' practices it will make a huge difference in the efficiency and quality of hiring.